Emotions
by niara a. tepes
Summary: Emotions and the power they bring from the eyes of one who many believe has none.
1. hate

Okay, a quick note about this one: I wasn't intending to write an introspective work, that just happened. I was bored and passing some time and, somehow, this came out, so, yeah…

**Disclaimer**: I do not own nor claim to own anything in association with Final Fantasy sevens or its affiliations.

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Hatred.

An emotion that changes so many things. It is the antithesis of love, the rawest form of anger, the greatest sign of acknowledgement. It is the begining of wars and the reason for killing. Without it, nothing would exist as it is.

Hatred fills the body, clouds a person's vision, distorts the mind, confuses the senses and augments everything to levels previously unreachable. It brings the power to live when one can no longer stand. It brings the power to defy when all else is lost. It brings the strength to stand against all that one is against and continue to face it, no matter the consequences of that person's actions.

Fire and ice, opposing elements, symbolize hate, give it physical form and tangible surface, give it power and life in a way previously unheard of.

Crimson eyes watched the hatred fuel his child's actions, his desires and dreams. He watched as that hatred turned his only son into a monster unlike any other.

Who was he to judge whether or not another was a monster?

Power that was once fueled by determination was now fueled by hatred, making it greater, stronger, more violent than previously scene. Those eyes, those glowing, acid colored eyes burned with the poison and hatred that flowed through his son's veins inspired fear and awe in most all that gazed into them. Only two, that he knew of, were able to remain unafraid when gazing upon those eyes: himself and the boy that was both a part and separate from his son.

That boy, when gazing into his son's eyes, was filled with that same type of hatred, that same type fury that was endless, incapable of being quenched by anything save the death of that which inspired such hatred.

And when he gazed at his son, all that he could feel was sorrow, this useless, powerless emotion that only succeeded in interfering with his ability to finish his work. He felt no hatred when gazing at his son; only fury at the thought at what was done to the child, done to the woman who had given him life, done to _him_.

When he thought of the one that had done this to them, and so many more, all he could feel that pure, inspiring hatred that drove him to unending heights, unreachable by any save those few whose rage was greater than even his.


	2. love

Yet another rambling thought that sprouted from my mind.....these my get longer, eventually, but I wouldn't hold my breath too much....

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Love.

He had heard it said that love was the most powerful, wonderful emotion in the world. He had heard that it was almost surreal, like flying through the clouds. He had heard that love was the most beautiful emotion imaginable and, once found, meant eternal bliss.

To him, love meant nothing but pain. Pain and death.

He had loved his father, in his own way, only for him to die, devoted solely to his work. He had loved Lucrecia, loved her enough that he had entered into an affair with her, had helped her to break that most sacred union between her whom he loved and the man _she_ had professed to love. He had loved his unborn child, had adored that new life as much as he had loved her.

What had that love gotten him, in the end? Had he ended in happiness?

All his love had gotten him was a bullet through the heart and four monsters in his head. All his love had done for him was get him strapped to a cold, steel table, his body cut open and poked and prodded constantly by a madman. All his love had given him was unending torment and thirty years trapped with his nightmares and demons in a coffin, buried in the ruins of the very place where he had fallen in love. All his love bestowed upon him was regret.

Then he awoke to learn of his son's fate. He woke to learn that the child he had never been given the chance to love, his and Lucrecia's child, had chosen to end everything. His son had forsaken everything without ever desiring to know anything else, all for the love of some_thing_ that could never love him.

He had felt his heart break all over again, raining down like shards of glass.

Now, he stands beside those that had released him, seeing the love that lives in them and finding a kinsman in the one that has sworn to kill his son. Cloud is the same, he has realized. Cloud loves his son, though in his own way, just as Cloud loved Zach, the soldier whose personality he had assimilated. The woman he had loved had been killed by one he loved and his heart was torn, unable to be mended.

Or was it unallowed?

He couldn't be sure, and it did not matter. He could see the love that was beginning to blossom in Tifa's eyes as she looked at Cloud and he knew that, given time, Cloud could be made whole again, could learn the side of love that he himself had never been allowed to witness.

For now, he only watches, the love he feels for his son driving him to protect him from that monstrous blade, even as he raises his own weapon and pulls the trigger, in the name of protecting those he loves _now_.


End file.
